This invention relates to a method and apparatus for rapidly arranging and filling pots or other like plant containers with soil in preparation for planting of seeds or seedlings in the pots.
It has become common practice to use rather flexible, biodegradable containers or pots in connection with commercial greenhouse and truck garden operations, particularly in growing small plants (both flowers and vegetables) to be sold to individual home owners, gardeners, etc. These flexible pots, which are usually frustoconical in shape, are molded of a mixture of peat moss and sawdust or other similar materials. While pots can stand some abuse, they are subject to tearing and other damage in handling and filling.
The biodegradable pots are usually received by the greenhouse in tall stacks. The usual practice is to take the pots from a stack, fill them with soil or a mixture of soil, fertilizer and other materials one at a time, and plant a seedling or seed in the filled pot. A number of pots are then placed in a shallow wooden or plastic tray, called a "flat". The pots remain in the flat during the initial growing state and many times the seeded pots are transferred in the flat to the point of sale or planting.
The present method of removing the individual pots from a tall stack as they are received, filling them one by one with soil, planting a seed or seedling in each pot and placing each pot individually in a flat, is a very time consuming procedure.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a method and apparatus for rapidly arranging a large number of biodegradable pots in a predetermined pattern or arrangement so that the pots will fit snugly into a flat where they can rapidly be filled with soil in a single operation.